The field of wireless communications faces pressure from explosive increase of data services. In order to improve network capacity and reduce transport cost, the industry proposes a heterogeneous network (Hetnet) technology. A Hetnet is composed of multiple cells of different sizes and types, including a macro cell and a micro-class cell. Micro-class cells include cells in forms such as a micro cell, a pico cell, a femto cell, and a remote radio head (RRH). Through deploying more micro-class cells for a traffic dense area, the network capacity of the area can be effectively improved; in addition, because of a relatively small scale of the micro-class cell, both the capital expenditure (Capax) and the operating expense (Opex) of the micro-class cell are relatively low, and therefore the Hetnet is valued by numerous operators, and is an important direction of wireless network evolution.
In the prior art, when a UE needs to be handed over from a macro cell to a micro-class cell, because a conventional user equipment (UE) does not have a capability of reading system information of a neighboring cell, and only can report a scrambling code of a target cell to a source node rather than reporting an identifier of the target cell. The number of micro-class neighboring cells of the macro cell is large, but the scrambling codes that are available to the micro-class cell are limited, therefore it is quite possible for multiple micro-class cells to reuse the same scrambling code (Primary Scrambling Code (PSC)).
Therefore, when a target node receives a scrambling code of a target cell, it is quite possible that the scrambling code corresponds to multiple micro-class cells, and the target cell cannot be determined. A source node compares the scrambling code with scrambling codes of all neighboring micro-class cells, and transmits a link establishment request message to one of micro-class cells that match the scrambling code, which may result in handover to a wrong cell, and it is difficult to ensure that a UE is successfully handed over to a target cell with relatively high signal quality.